Lie With Me (Stonewall Investigations Miami 2)

If there weren’t any red flags on the field already, he just dumped a bucket of them.

“Will, you said you didn’t see Mason or Jar, correct?”

He nodded, saying, “I didn’t see them anywhere.”

“But you went inside Oliver’s apartment, right?”

Another nod. His eyebrows came together, a crevice forming down the center. “Why?”

“You have a ball of cat hair stuck to your leg.” I pointed down at the leg where the orange hair gleamed under the white of the floodlight.

Will kicked it off. He looked at me and shrugged. “I must have picked it up as I was leaving.”

I measured up the man standing in front of me. Oliver had considered him a best friend for years, even traveling with him across the world on holiday. If it weren’t for Will, Oliver and I may not have even ever met. He never gave me any reason to either like or dislike him. He always treated me fine and always seemed to have Oliver’s back…

Maybe a little too much?

I didn’t have a chance to answer. Will, seeming to remember his “stove,” unlocked his car and got into it in a hurry. Before the window was down, he was already pulling out of the driveway. He yelled out of the car, “I’ll meet you at his.”

His car let out a puff of exhaust as he drove down the street.

“You won’t take the piss outta me, mate.”

Something felt entirely wrong about Will, and I wasn’t going to let him out of my sight. I got into my car and sped out of my garage. I had already memorized Will’s license plate, a trick I’d gained after years of reading plates, and I knew exactly what crusty car he drove. I spotted the red Toyota two streetlights away from my house.

I slipped into surveillance mode. The night was young, and there were plenty of people out in Miami Beach, meaning there were plenty of cars for me to hide behind as I tailed Will.

There were a couple of risks involved with this. One, I could end up losing my chance at finding something in Oliver’s apartment since I was using my time to track Will. Another risk was Will spotting me, recognizing that I was following him. This could anger him, and if tonight were all some kind of innocent mix-up and Oliver was really out getting a midnight pedicure somewhere, then maybe Oliver could end up being angry at me, too. He was pissed when I’d even suggested that Tyra could be involved. I didn’t want to see how he’d react to finding out I followed his best friend without more evidence than a gut feeling and a thick knot of cat hair.

And yet, even with those risks weighed, I couldn’t let Will out of my sights. Not yet.

I grabbed my phone. Will stopped at a red light three cars up from me. All around us were nightclubs with their neon signs lighting up Ocean Avenue. Music thumped from the two-story nightclubs, vibrating against my windows. There were lines of people, all dressed to the nines, all waiting to get in to dance the night away.

The phone call connected to my car. Anya’s voice competed with the music from outside. “Sup, Beckham.”

“Anya, I need you to do me a huge favor. Are you by a computer?”

“Pfft, I’m always by the computer. Am I by a computer?” I could hear her typing something in the background. “Bitch, I am the computer.”

That got a chuckle out of me. “All right, Ms. Hard Drive, can you look up a name for me? I have their license plate, too.”

“Sure, shoot.”

I repeated the plate number and Will’s full name, the light turning green. “Give me ever—”

“William Stevenson, goes by Will, lives on Seventy-Fourth and Kendall Drive, has two parents, both alive and both loaded as fuck. Hmm…”

“They have money?”

“A ton of it. The dad’s an investor, and the mom’s a top Realtor.”

The money hadn’t found its way down to William. He took a turn, moving away from the beach. He drove past the highway entrance, which I thought he’d take to get home. Instead, he kept driving, going in the opposite direction.

“Anything else?”

The streets were emptying of people as we got farther from the beach. The partygoers were replaced by dodgy-looking guys still wearing shades even though the streetlamp they were standing under wasn’t working. The neighborhood continued to get more and more questionable, and it happened quickly.

“I’m looking… oh! No, wait. False alarm.”

William made another turn. We were deep into Downtown Miami now, still moving away from the beach.

“I don’t know, Beck. This guy’s squeaky clean. All he’s got is a six-year-old speeding ticket and a couple of—”

“How old?”

“Six years. He got it on… he was ticketed on the seventeenth of July at 12:46 a.m.”

My pulse exploded. “Anya, where’d he get this ticket?”